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'Misinformation' and 'toxic' are the words of the year for 2018

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Chris J Ratcliffe

<p>Signs for company Cambridge Analytica in the lobby of the building in which they are based on March 21, 2018 in London, England. UK authorities are currently seeking a warrant to search the premises of Cambridge Analytica after the company has been involved in a row over its use of Facebook data. </p>

If someone tells you any words other than "misinformation" and "toxic" are the words of the year, it's fake news.

Dictionary.com chose the word "misinformation" on Monday and said it intentionally went with "mis" over "dis." It's the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or do it on purpose, the website wanted to highlight, according to the Associated Press.

"The recent explosion of misinformation and the growing vocabulary we use to understand it have come up again and again in the work of our lexicographers," Dictionary.com says.

This year, we saw technology platforms grapple with the role they play in the spread of misinformation. Critics blamed Facebook, in particular, pointing to the following:

the revelation that Cambridge Analytica had harvested personal data on Facebook to create in-depth psychological profiles of individuals, which were used to influence the Brexit vote and the US election

the abundance of fake political ads across the platform; even after Facebook required political ads to include “Paid for by” messaging, Vice News
found this feature easily exploitable by simply lying

CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s stance that Holocaust denial posts do not breach Facebook’s code of conduct because they are only wrong as opposed to intentionally misleading

the lack of content moderation across languages on Facebook and WhatsApp
that contributed to the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar

Other words that almost took 2018's top spot are "representation" (because of the popularity of movies such as "Black Panther" and "Crazy Rich Asians"), "self-made" and "backlash".